local genesis. local problem. local solution...if ever possible! true democracy in Moslem ME is an oxymoron! and please don't export your perfect life on earth formula! and don't blame the West. your own people kill, maim, torture and destroy property on your own people. for the West it is how much longer this problem goes on before it really affects the rest of the world.

Obama is very personally offended by Russia's anti-gay laws and protested to a late-night comedy show host. But he says nothing about this massacre, crime against humanity, even though Egyptian army is in his command.

Many people in the west have been asking why doesn't the moderate Muslims stand up to the Muslim extremists, when moderates finally do in Egypt and request their army to overthrow a fascist government the same ones who asked the original question get all bent out of shape. Even worse their media outlets are supporting terrorism by not showing Egyptian extremists' crimes. They are only showing one side: protestors getting killed. No one is talking about the police and army officers who are being slaughtered or churches being burned

Many people in the west have been asking why doesn't the moderate Muslims stand up to the Muslim terrorists, when moderates finally do in Egypt and request their army to overthrow a fascist government the same ones who asked the original question get all bent out of shape. Even worse their media outlets are supporting terrorism by not showing Egyptian extremists' crimes. They are only showing one side: protestors getting killed. No one is talking about the police and army officers who being slaughtered or churches being burned

The Beast have been telling the same storyline about their bros in Syria for over 2 years in the mainstream Western Media. If the Western media change its story, they would make the Beast, the bestial maids of intervention and the Pooches of Europe looking rather silly in the bombast as being on the right side of History.

Many people in the west have been asking why doesn't the moderate Muslims stand up to the Muslim terrorists, when moderates finally do in Egypt and request their army to overthrow a fascist government the same ones who asked the original question get all bent out of shape. Even worse their media outlets are supporting terrorism by not showing Egyptian extremists' crimes. They are only showing one side: protestors getting killed. No one is talking about the police and army officers who being slaughtered or churches being burned

You can talking about the Bros in Syria, mate. Even the Western Media and neocon in the Houses are urging Beast and those pooches of Europe to weaponize the Jabhat Al Nusra Jihadists of the Iraq and the Levant to eat out the lungs of police and army officer alive. The Bestial Maids of interventions are sure that the Western Media are on the right side of History.

Isn't it time that we admitted the "majority rule" view of democracy as failed and archaic? If we cling to outdated Westminster concepts, then we paint entire nations into a corner of perpetual warfare, which can only partly be alleviated by "partition" in the India/Pakistan sense.

Premature elections hijacked by a better organized and funded Morsi paved the way for incremental imposition of one-sided Shariah law, leaving the Army with no option but to respond. The AK-47's, barricades and destruction of property currently underway, are primarily at Brotherhood instigation - again, predetermining the military response. The retribution attacks against Christians in Egypt are nothing new, they are a constant threat in all Islamic states, which should remind of the danger of religion subverting democracy.

Why repeat the mistake by rushing into another quick fix?

Order must first be restored, whether the Brotherhood likes it or not, and time needs to be taken to construct a secular consociational constitution, with equal state funding of competing parties, requiring consensus to govern and underpinned by entrenched individual human rights.

If the West and the USA are sincere, they need to forego their "political correctness" in backing the Brotherhood and instead direct the UN Security Council to offer peace keeping and the IMF economic resources, to stabilise the situation.

Allow Egyptians to resolve and unfold their own solutions, as long as it takes; nothing else can work.

Might as well call it a hurricane, It will ravage democracy. But isn't democracy the Law that stipulates that government shall make no religious institutions and shall keep religion out of the business of state? When an election has been won with Allahu Akbar, that is not democracy, it is it's end. Will western democracies stand against the corruption of their own Law? The howls and quacks of religion sap the very life out of the very democracy the western states have been toiling with, a democracy that slips through their fingers. It's either out with religion or the end of democracy. What will it be?

It seems very apparent that democratically electing an Islamist government will end any semblance of democracy quite quickly.
Can someone give an example of a democracy which survived a democratically elected Islamist government (meaning a non-Islamist government was peacefully voted in after an Islamist government's term)?

Democracy remains as the rule of the people, to be all equal under law, and to ensure that power is not monopolized. When an elected president allows his supporters to be above the law and put the media production city under siege without even trying to stop them, in fact, encouraging them this is no democracy. When a president is actually ruled by his (brotherhood) leader who puppeteer him to take decisions for the welfare of his brotherhood international best interest, and not necessarily the countries best interest, this is no democracy. When a president goes above the judicial system and tries to control it by force using his supporters to put the Supreme Court under siege, this is also no democracy. When what have been said, is a sample of the dire conditions Egyptian had to live with, then the democratically elected president has lost his constitutional right to be a president. This is why more than 20 million people have gathered in the streets, not once but 3 times to say clearly that they don't want this rule. Worth mentioning that the people in the streets exceeded those who elected the president a year before by at least 5 million. The brotherhood argues that numbers were in millions and claim that they were only thousands, the only rational thing to do is to hold another election, but the brotherhood refused clearly through the words of their spokesmen Mr.Mohamed Morsi - and the ARMY was mandated to move to act on behalf of the people because one president gone is a better position than millions of people in the street. A democratic and peaceful move from the brotherhood is to hold an early elections; this would put the generals in a real situation, if they won again. But no, they know they won't be re-elected - they decided to say either they rule Egypt or they Kill and Terrorize Egyptians. they held camps in the middle of Cairo, and if anyone of the readers would accept that his apartment block to be blocked by people living in the street, thoroughly checking him and his wife and the kids each and every time they go down or up their apartment please say so. They have the right to protest peacefully, but they don't have the right to stop the lives of around 20k people living around the camp streets. It’s like thousands of people making a camp in the middle of Manhattan NY (would really like to know what the US administration would do in such a case). Out of this camp came the most racist and hatred words against the Egyptian community I have heard in my life. They declared all those against their cause as infidel and it is only fair to kill them. The Army and the Police and the people gave them a month, and allowed foreign politicians to try to convince the brotherhood leaders to move or stop the camp, but they didn't. If it’s fair for them to protest, it’s unfair for the people living in this area to suffer. They had to be moved, it was intended to be peaceful, but, when they raise arms against the security forces and shoot at them, by law, security forces should and must return the fire. As for what happened during the past few days, if what they call themselves Islamists, raise Al-Qaeda flag in the middle of Cairo and held automatic machine guns and went around killing people, burning churches, killing and mutilating police officers should be called anything but terrorists, please tell the Egyptian people so. The army had to move and if the death toll was high, regretfully, the blood is on the hands of the brotherhood that let their supporters carry arms against peaceful Egyptian in the first place. Democracy is the Rule of the people, not a single terrorist group wearing an Islamic flag. This is War against Terrorism - and democracy will win.

Is that supposed to be a fair analogy?
The Occupy protesters were peacefully camped for the most part, not firing guns at the authorities. Educated American kids, not fanatical religious illiterates.
For the record, NYC cops can kill you for reaching for a wallet.

Democracy means wait for the next polls if you find that the government you have elected this time is not working well. Democracy does not mean voting for one government one day, and crying for its uprooting the next day. If you want to pull down a government you have to choose democratic means.

Elloy - That's a purely over simplistic, even juvenile, take on Democracy. Look at US history!
Americans had to fight a massive Civil War to BEGIN to enforce a Democracy. (US Supreme Court ruled a Black Man got 3/5ths of a vote!) No war, no democracy!
Even after that murderous war, many conquered states successfully took every opportunity to prevent certain peoples from voting! Then, it took another 50 years to include women in the vote! Then, another 50 to fully include Blacks!
Your oversimplification is exactly what oppressive powers that be would have all oppressed people think: Sit on your hands and wait your turn.

The US is a much different place than Egypt. I will focus on the really basic differences.

In Egypt, they have huge water shortages, and for 50%+ of the population, you are lucky if you get bread. That's Egypt.

Somehow, under Mubarak, they managed to have a quasi-functional economy. They had foreign reserves of $36 billion. In a country where you are lucky to get bread. You can cry injustice, or you can say that is one bright spot in an otherwise *desert*.

Now, in two years not under Mubarak, they spent $24 billion and were left with $12 billion. That could not continue, the population saw that direction was Somalia, so they threw the bums out.

Occupy Wall Street did not cost the United States $20 trillion dollars which is about what the equivalent would be, considering the immense capacity of the US Treasury, federal reserve, currency and commodity reserves, and position as a world reserve currency.

If Occupy had cost $10 trillion a year for two years to the United States economy, everybody would support shooting a thousand people in the head.

That is your really honest civics lesson.

The Occupy Wall Street disturbance/US comparison to a country where that economy allows one to eat and drink, in good times, is a bad one.

Please, I am mainly talking to anybody who is Egyptian. I also wish to say that I am not kidding anyone neither I would be respectless to all the dead. I am just astonished that such a violence has broken out, moreover I would like to put this question:
Was Mr Morsi such a bad fellow to be hated so much? It seems that all this mayhem started when he was ousted. I think only a dangerous criminal rather than a despot may be loathed as much as people wouldn't even mind any other possible risk, like these.
Right, now everything is burning, however my question is the same:
Was it worth risking so much? Was Morsi's rule that unbearable?

in democracy nothing called control but accurate term is manageable,
he extremly faild to manage the country and integrated with political parties as well.
unfortunitly Brotherhood tried to dominate the whole poltical regime so fast.

It is difficult for outsiders to take-in all the details of the internal politics of a country the size of Egypt. I support "Liberal Western Democracy" as understood by most Americans and some others. I do not support the various and sundry misnamed forms of government which simply have the label "Democratic" or "Elected" attached to it. Those are a fraud as far as I am concerned and I have to laugh at the people who are taken-in by such fraud. They facilitate bad government and pseudo-democracy by letting themselves being fooled.

Some cultures and sub-cultures do not understand the give-and-take of democracy, the implied limits on power, and the rights of minority groups to fair treatment. The winner-take-all mentality is by no means missing from American politics but there are limits and the courts have been known to intervene in the political process to protect those out-of-power. This is based on culture and history and is the foundation of a democratic system. Ii find it hard to explain. Like porno . . . I know it when I see it.

Morsi was "elected" so I am prone to feel that he should have been left in power until he is un-elected. But Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are about as democratic as the Bolsheviks in Russia or the Nazis in Germany. All of them used "democracy" as a tool to gain and hold power so they can suppress others and force their vision of the world on others. The Egyptian army is also a huge "business" and power group which also is un-democratic. I get that.

So when I read about Nazis and Bolsheviks killing each other in the 1940's I can not help but think "What a good thing! Fewer bad guys." Is this any different than The Egyptian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood killing each other? Probably. But neither side in Egypt has any idea what Liberal Western Democracy means, and neither side will play by the rules which I believe politics should follow.

So we am left to choose the "least offensive" bad guy? Isn't this what people often criticise the U.S. for doing? So why should we do it now? Obama is showing displeasure at the situation, but how can he choose one bad-guy over another when both are disgusting and repulsive to a believer in Liberal Democracy? Either way you lose.

It's easy to choose, Right and Wrong are clear. There are people who want to be free, live better and live peacefully and there are minority who want to enslave others for power. When Al-Qaeda supports the Muslim brotherhood regime it tells which is which.

Egyptians are not Fascists fighting Nazis, it's the people correcting a democratic mistake (because its a new democracy) by toppling a fascist government that hijacked and abused the democratic process - just as you said. They used democracy to enslave Egyptians.

Mr.Obama is supporting legitimacy in Egypt, supporting a government endorsed by Al-Qaeda. For What reasons????

Those who raise monsters in their backyards, monsters grow to eat them.

A better bet and choice is on the people, the majority, plagued by poverty and ignorance and decades of autocratic rule, still know what is right and what is not and choose to stand in 10's of millions against whats wrong.

Choose to collectively stand against being enslaved again, all together, People, Army and Police

What is happening is a war on terrorism. The terrorism that uses our own systems against us, just like cancer uses the human body cells against itself until it kills it.

Egyptians, the majority, the fine 5000 years old people will ultimately prevail, because what they want is only peace and fairness.

Egypt is an overcrowded desert where 50% of the people are lucky to get bread and water. Yet they had $36 billion in the bank that Mubarak didn't steal, and a quasi-funtioning economy. In 2 years, they burned 24$ billion and were left with 12$bill.

They simply could not afford *anything* other than military rule asap because the islamists had their head up their ais in terms of balancing the books, in a country where you might get bread and water if you are lucky.

You wrote "The camps were noisy, somewhat disruptive to the city’s traffic and increasingly vexatious to the army-led regime that had come to power in the coup."

This is hardly the complete truth! In fact, this ridiculously watered-down description of reality borders on misleading your readership!

What about the documented and filmed atrocities that those camps' members committed? The dug-out pavements on public streets, the building of reinforced concrete walls on public roads to fortify their gatherings, the carrying of weapons, searching/harassing residents of nearby neighbourhoods as they go in/out their homes, the kidnapping and torturing (and sometimes killing) of other civilians passers-by who disagree with them, etc. The incitement of radical violence and fascism in the name of religion.

Which 'democratic' Western country (or any sovereign country, for that matter) today would allow such camps to take place without dispersing them? The disruption to public life and threat to national security were too great to describe them in the ridiculously-understated and misleading words of "noisy" and "disruptive to the city's traffic" that your article used!

Why do Western media deliberately under-cover the atrocities the Muslim Brotherhood are committing? - shooting civilians, mutilating and killing police officers, burning churches, inviting foreign militants to their own country just because they further their narrow interests, etc. Also, why undercover the fact that Egyptian authorities took many measures to disperse the camps peacefully (and many responded to that and left) but when hardliners defied it and opened fire, the police had to respond.

Yes, most Egyptians are sad that blood is being spelt, and some mistakes could happen along the way, but most are much happier that the country is going generally in the right direction - towards a grown-up secular national regime, with the guarding of a patriotic army, rather than a fascist, twisted group of radicals dreaming of unrealisable return of caliphate across the Muslim world in the 21st century, even at the expense of their own country's political and economic standing...

I saw what appeared to be rioters with AK-47's on the streets of Cairo last night on BBC World. It appeared that they were going to shoot, but the BBC cut the picture at that point. Why? Why did the BBC cut the picture at that point? Knowing the BBC I suspect they were censoring the footage for editorial (political) reasons.
I am sure that there are terrorists shooting at the cops. I am sure there are cops shooting at the terrorists. There are no good-guys in this conflict. Just two groups of bad-guys. How do you choose one over the other?

The video I saw showed a "protester" who was masked and going in and out of a small building and firing indiscriminately. He was surrounded by a group which seemed outside the main group of protesters. It is the most common ruse of dictatorships and police states to plant their people in large demonstrations.

Even if a few of the protesters were armed, how does this square with the massacre of civilians by the Egyptian army and police with their massively superior and murderous firepower?

Why indeed was BBC censoring the footage?
I believe they just want to tell a story. A story which is supposed to be consumed by the viewers. Everybody knows that a story is a conflict between the good and the bad. They had to chose the good and the bad. It cannot be that everybody is bad. The story just does not make any sense. BBC does not want to tell a story that does not make any sense. So they chose the MB as the good guys and the army as the bad guys. This is how it appeared at first at least, MB was democratically elected while the army did a coup. If later it turns out that the MB is worse than the military one can not change the story, people will just get confused. People will believe BBC is confusing and they will stop watching. They need their viewers and unfortunately the public does not like depth and do not invest time and effort to understand the nuances.

Unlike Algeria Egypt has no oil wealth to sustain it during this period of turmoil. All the Brotherhood needs to do is to make Egypt ungovernable and bring it to its knees as a pathway to ultimate victory. The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia do not have the kind of wealth to sustain a population of 80 million for the next 20 years. The Egyptian Army is bound to implode soon. Those been murdered by it are the relatives of many in its lower ranks. The West does not want the Brotherhood in power and has made that clear but it will have no choice but to reconcile itself to losing Egypt to radical Islamists. Taking Egypt out of commission in the short term is a victory to Israel but the longer term prognosis will not be to its liking. It is now very clear that Islamists cannot secure and keep power through democratic means due to resistance from the West and its proxy forces like Saudi Arabia, The Gulf States and Israel. The only alternative is to take it by force and /or by any means necessary. May God be with the radicals.

You Bros are brainwashed. Forget Israel. This is a cesspool if your own making. Your the ones killing each other over power.
One thing is for sure. The Suez Canal will remain open so there is no way the West will let this descend into complete anarchy.

Blaming the current unrest in Egypt on "the West" is just more crap. What has "the West" done? They have sent no troops, made no threats, not imposed a crushing embargo. Nothing. "The West" has expressed much displeasure with the actions of both sides but especially the Army. The money sent to the Army is very modest and apparently has little influence.

Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are just thugs in $2,000 suits. They spent a year making Egypt a worse place to live. They spewed more hate at the West. Andy now, you are surprised that the West does not rush to their aid??? Really???

Egyptians couldn't afford to burn through their hard-saved national treasury any longer. Their love affair with the previously-locked-up and banned Brotherhood is now over; When given the chance to govern, they couldn't restart the economy.

Foreign reserves in this food and water challenged, overpopulated desert went from $36 billion to $12 billion in two years. Anybody who had ever had a job saw the handwriting on the wall.

That's also why they needed to end the standoff, by any means. The people are desperate, and they messed up their own economy with "arab-spring" bs.

The Muslim Brotherhood acted in complete disregard for human life, as expected of a genocide construct, simply to gain political support in proportion to the lives the Muslim Brotherhood caused by their action to put their fighters within the public space of unarmed Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Humanity knows this to be true as we have seen the complete disregard for life Islamists have to enable women and children to be put in harm’s way simply to gain political leverage. To support the Muslim Brotherhood in anyway because of the deaths arising directly from Egyptian police having to defend themselves is obscene.

Democracy and Islam are as oil and water. Democracy for Islam is a means to an end not an end in itself. The end of Democracy.

They were the only ones already organized and still just barely won the election. The election was held too soon so the rest of the partied had no time to form and organize. There is no way they could ever get elected again no that their true nature has been exposed.

Your question goes to the heart of the issue. A vote is not democracy, and the fact you have to ask the question suggests the answer. Morsi and the "Bros" spent a year suppressing minorities, encouraging violence against non-Muslims, spewing bile at the "West", and made the economy even worse. It is not my place to support or not support Morsi, but I am exercising my democratic rights to condemn him and his "Bros" as more examples of ignorant and foolish thugs.

"The Nazi had won the German Election fair and square. If that is not Democracy then what is?"

When the powers that be in Germany in the 1930s sought to prevent the Nazi taking 'Democratic' power a Leftist Jewish newspaper editor at the time urged those blocking the Nazi party from power to enable the Nazi to take over - Democratic vote after all.

What do you think was the flaw in the Leftist Jewish newspaper editor's argument? Read the last sentence above replace the obvious words - does it make sense now?

So what you do not need the majority of the vote to rule or to claim the right to - the Nazi had a significant gain in their support the largest party and it is not at all unusual in such cases for such a party to claim 'they' should have the power - The Australian Labor party does not have a majority in the Aust Parliament - it matters how?

It matters if you try to imply that a given political party was voted in by a majority of the voters. Political parties take power by all sorts of means, often with only around 30% of voters actually voting for them.

America is behind this massacre.
First, America is refusing to call this coup as coup.
Second, America is refusing to stop supplying military weapons to Egypt which may be used to kill more people.
Third, America is refusing to convene UN Security Coucil to refer General Sisi and his coconspirators to International Criminal Court for this crimes against humanity.

Should Obama be indicted to International Criminal Court for the crimes against humanity?

Americans are in support of the egyptian people who wanted the brotherhood out and who support the military in their performance to do so. I think the world consensus is that the only good islamist is a dead islamist.